Lootie is supposed to be keeping Irene safe especially from goblins, but one day as they are out exploring, Lootie realizes they’ve gone too far and won’t make it back home before dark. Eons of living “away from the sun, in cold and wet and dark places” had transformed them into hideous and grotesque creatures.

One thing the princess doesn’t know, but everyone else does, is that the mountains’ underground passages are full of goblins who used to be people but chose to live underground after some disagreements with the King. Irene is quite offended, but after a while she wonders if perhaps her visit to her great-great-grandmother was all just a dream.

Irene tells Lootie all about her great-great-grandmother, but Lootie thinks she is just making up stories. After her great-great-grandmother wipes the tears from Irene’s dusty face and shows her her pigeons, she shows her the way back downstairs so that Lootie won’t be worried about her. She told Irene she was her great-great-grandmother and that she was also named Irene. Though she was obviously very old and wise, with white hair, her skin was smooth. She can’t find her way back down and gets quite upset until she finds a very old lady at a spinning wheel in one room. She decides to investigate but gets thoroughly lost amidst seemingly myriad doors. On this rainy day her nurse, Lootie, leaves the room for a moment, and Irene notices another door left ajar, one that goes upstairs. Her “King Papa” has sent her out into the country to be raised at first because her mother was not very strong, later because her mother died and her father was often away on kingdom business. The story begins with a bored 8 year old Princess Irene, inside on a rainy day, restless and dissatisfied with all her many wonderful toys.

That’s one of the values of these kinds of challenges and book clubs: they spur me to read books I might not otherwise have ever gotten around to. So I was delighted to see this title listed for this month for Carrie’s Reading to Know Classics Book Club. Her pastor spoke of her love for literature and mentioned her hanging on to the truth she knew in the face of such devastating circumstances, just like the princess followed her great-great-grandmother’s thread through the goblin cave even though no one else could see it or believed it was there (more on that later). I was especially interested in The Princess and the Goblin after listening to the funeral service of a young wife and mom who passed away last year (Julie Herbster, for those who knew her). I’ve seen him quoted by various others, but somehow I don’t think I have ever read one of his books. Lewis, whose imagination, he said, was “baptised” by reading MacDonald’s Phantastes. My interest in George MacDonald was first piqued when I read of his influence on the life and writings of C.

1849 novel by charlotte bronte